One girl's salt is another girl's fleur de sel

December 01, 2010

Baking with Quinoa Flour; or, how to make one of the worst gluten-free pantry ingredients into a baking superstar

After a disastrous attempt at making a cake using quinoa flour, I abandoned the bitter, grassy stuff in favor of blends of other gluten-free grains, including buckwheat, teff, brown rice, millet and tapioca. I never thought I would go back to quinoa until a sample of a cookie made with quinoa flour changed my mind.

When I first abandoned gluten in my diet, about four years ago on the recommendation of my nutritionist who was trying to address chronic illness with diet, quinoa seemed like a natural fit for my baking. But because quinoa flour is so bitter, earthy, and grassy, it easily overpowers the other ingredients in a recipe. This is due, in part, to saponin, a toxic glycoside that coats the outer layer of the quinoa seed. Saponin can be washed off or removed via abrasion, and usually is before it is sold commercially to consumers. But the washing isn't always thorough enough, and some trace of saponin remains. There's also phytic acid, which gets in the way of the absorption of minerals in the digestive tract - this is removed to some extent by heat treating but requires fermentation and sprouting to more thoroughly break it down.

The saponin isn't a problem if you are buying quinoa seeds to use in savory recipes. All you need to do is wash the quinoa again, as you would certain kinds of starchy polished rice. But milled as flour and included in a recipe, this not-quite-washed-all-the-way grain becomes a gatecrasher and ruins just about everything it touches.

Yuck.

But there's an utterly simple solution to this, a solution that not only takes care of the bitterness and grassy flavors, but also inactivates trypsin inhibitor, (warning, long explanation ahead) a compound that reduces the bio-availability of trypsin, an enzyme which helps hydrolyse proteins (this is especially important for lysine, an amino acid that is vital to human health and is most commonly found in beans and dairy but occurs in quinoa in high levels).

The oven. That's the solution.

And quinoa is worth it. Its protein and fiber content is higher than wheat, it has fewer carbs than wheat, and it is packed with vitamin and minerals. Its fat content is slightly higher than that of oats and nearly 3x that of wheat. It works like pastry flour in baked goods, especially when combined with other flours. Trust me, baking the quinoa may be an extra step, but it is simple and easy and will make your baked goods better tasting and better for you.

You don't need to toast or pay attention to quinoa while you are heat processing it, but heat process it you must.

Here's all you need to do to make baking-ready quinoa flour:

Preheat oven to 212 or 215 F (100 C)

Empty out bag of quinoa flour onto as many sheet pans as you need, preferably onto a new piece of parchment paper

Make sure the layer of flour is no deeper than 1/4"

Place in preheated oven for two hours

Remove from oven. Allow to cool. Place in bags

Store bag in freezer for up to 8 months if you are not planning to use flour soon. Whole quinoa flour is relatively high in fat, making it vulnerable to oxidation and rancidity. Freezing will extend the shelf-life.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, I have worked with a quinoa flour that was "triple washed" before milling. And guess what? It was still earthy, soapy, and grassy. All quinoa flour needs to be toasted, unless it is pre-toasted.

If you want to see what a difference it makes, hold back enough quinoa flour and bake two identical batches of something, anything with the toasted and green quinoa. You'll be pleasantly surprised, or perhaps shocked. Huge difference!

Yes you can. The saponins are on the outside of the seed, so you most certainly can toast the whole quinoa before you grind them. Check first to see if the quinoa has been washed - not all of it gets washed before packaging (it will taste bitter/soapy if it hasn't been washed). If it hasn't, you may want to rinse them a few times first (the mill I work with 'triple washes' their quinoa) and then dry them out in your oven, making sure to stir frequently to ensure they do not stick together.

A friend of mine made a chocolate cake with quinoa and no flour and it was AMAZING! she didnt tell me till after I ate it that it was made with quinoa. And she took normal quinoa (not flour), cooked it, and then blended it and used it that way. She also used honey instead of sugar. The cake was soooo soft and moist and not "weird" in any way! it was pretty much like a chocolate lava cake. i cant wait to get the recipe and try it myself!

i am so grateful for stumbling across this website, because i just bought a bag of quinoa flour with the intent of making a birthday cake to bring to my friend's b-day party!! as we speak, the quinoa flour is toasting away in the oven.
thanks so much for sharing! i haven't found this valuable information anywhere else on the internet yet, except random blurbs that say toasting it makes it slightly nuttier. my cake would have been RUINED and i would have been soooo embarrassed :-P
thanks again

Hi
Do you have any quinoa flour recipes that have worked for you? I went to the health shop for a new diet and she recommended quinoa flour and not amaranth. So i bought it... $18.50 a kg later and i have no clue what to make with it!!.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. As you can imagine, being new to this food allergy thing has been a bit trying on the nerves.
Thanks in advance.
Vas

Wow, so cool to have stumbled onto this website and gotten this information. I was looking for innovative recipes that I could make for Passover. It couldn't have regular flour of course. Quinoa is considered permitted whereas other alternative flours such as rice or buckwheat or tapioca would certainly not be. So, I really appreciate finding this information so that I can prepare the quinoa. Thanks!

What??? My mind is blown! I can't believe quinoa is considered Kosher for Passover. What confuses me is that tapioca is actually a root - cassava - and it should be considered Kosher for Passover, whereas quinoa is technically a seed, which I didn't realize was okay. Good news all around!

My last few attempts to bake with quinoa flour were disappointing. Especially so since it is such a nutritious food. I can't wait to try this technique, though. I'll be doing it this weekend. This Administrative Professionals Day they'll be snaking on QUINOA APPLESAUCE CAKE!! Wish me luck.

thank you soooo much for this tip.
Today I made some raspberry scones with quinoa flour and was really surprised at the bitter taste (I'd have thought that they'd wash the seeds before grinding) and your explanation made me say: AH!
So I will toast the remaining flour and hope for the best. What a gem of a tip.

A friend of mine made a chocolate cake with quinoa and no flour and it was AMAZING! she didnt tell me till after I ate it that it was made with quinoa. And she took normal quinoa (not flour), cooked it, and then blended it and used it that way. She also used honey instead of sugar. The cake was soooo soft and moist and not "weird" in any way! it was pretty much like a chocolate lava cake. i cant wait to get the recipe

I just wanted to thank you for all of your helpful information on how to use quinoa flour. I do cooking demos and educate consumers how to use certain ingredients at a health food store. I made a quinoa zucchini bread with 100% quinoa flour. I did exactly the process of heating the quinoa flour. It was a huge success. I mentioned your web page on my blog, and owe it all to you..
www.annapoornacooks.blogspot.com

Oh thank goodness someone else has had this problem!
I bought a bag of quinoa flour to make breakfast porridge thinking "Quinoa! Yum!" and then upon putting the spoon in my mouth gargled "It's pooooison...!" and pushed it away like a petulant Goldilocks.
Glad to know I have a way of salvaging the rest of the bag.

Bob's Red Mill quinoa flour has a fabulous recipe for chocolate cupcakes that are delicious!! No toasting of the flour necessary. I think that the flavour of the cocoa blends well with the nuttiness of the quinoa...so chocolate baking recipes in general might be more successful with quinoa flour.

I've found that even in minute quantities (a couple tablespoons to a recipe) that quinoa's distinctive, unpleasant grass flavor can ruin a recipe. You may not be as sensitive to it - not a criticism but a point of fact that everyone tastes things a little differently.

How about if I got the quinoa grain, washed the devil out of it, dried it in a dehydrator and milled it in my stone mill. Would that work? I feel inclined to get rid of the poison rather than bake it away.

I'd add one more step - wash it like crazy, sprout it, dehydrate it, mill it. See if that works. The quinoa millers I have spoken to say they 'triple wash' their quinoa to remove the saponins. I can tell you that is never enough. The milled grain tastes exceptionally bitter despite the washing. Let me know how it goes.

You save me too! I found myself with 3 kgs of quinoa flour, didn't want to waste and had no clue what to do with them. I feared the strong flavor/smell of the flour on any baked goods and searched the webs for TIPS FOR BAKING WITH QUINOA and you came to me.. Thank you. I am toasting my flour right now...

BTW, I love buckwheat and cassava starch and learned to appreciate quinoa instead of rice for dinner (I sprout them first) but had never used the flour.

Do you think one could wash the raw quinoa, soak it, sprout it slightly, dehydrate it some to dry it, then bake it, then grind it to a flour? I'm interested in removing saponins, phytic acid, trypsin inhibitors...all the bad stuff. Also, I'm intrigued by the comment about cooking the quinoa (in water on the stove) and then blending it up with other ingredients for baked goods.

I love this!! I have a bag of organic quinoa. I have to rinse, dry ,bake, and then grind? Can I skip the rinse as the company says its triple washed. I was going to grind it into flour and then bake it as you recommended. What do you think? Thank you!!

Kate -- I never skip the washing. Ever. No matter how washed they say it is, quinoa can always use a good soak. Lisa's idea to sprout the quinoa is even better, and yes, Lisa, sprouted quinoa is great for flour making!

July 21/13 I bought some Quinoa flower some 4 months ago and to day I make a banana bread boy from now on it will be half white flower and have Quinoa flower and I m not a cook and my family wont leave it a lone

Will Quinoa flour hold together well enough to make homemade pasta out of it? I have an electric pasta machine and want to make pasta but on the anti-candida diet not many flours are allowed and absolutely no wheat.

Just made a pie crust with only 1/4 cup quinoa flour (didnt toast it) and was shocked at how bitter it was. I thought it couldn't be the quinoa flour, could it? Googled quinoa flour and came on this site. Question answered. Thanks!

Ah, so that is the problem! I am newly diagnosed celiac and I have heard such wonderful things about quinoa, so I got some flour and used it in pumpkin cupcakes... The batter was so bitter I doubled the recipe and used white rice flour and brown rice flour to cut the bitter. The cupcakes bite back, let me tell you! Thank you! A

You can certainly toast whole grain quinoa. Wash it several times first and very slowly heat it - you have a better chance of burning it when it is whole. As other readers have suggested, if you make quinoa flour, consider sprouting it first, dehydrating it, and then toasting it. You need slightly higher heat than a dehydrator offers to remove that soapy bitter flavor.

How do I sprout the quinoa? Have you got some tips?
I was very happy to find this information. I have cooked quinoa and used it instead of rice, I think that tastes wonderful. It says on the bag to wash the grain in hot water, so I use as warm water as I can take. Do you think that washing in warm/hot water will make the toastng unnessesary, or do you recommend both?
I am very interested in making flour to bake with!

hi,
in another post you have written '' To toast quinoa flour: heat oven to 300F. Turn oven off. Place quinoa flour on sheet tray and leave in hot oven until oven cools down, or about 2 hours. It is ready to use when cool." and instruction in this post is to keep Quinoa Floor in oven for two hours at 100C, is it ? I hope I won't burn it

I guess both technique works. Thank you for sharing this tip I will definitely try

I love this post it is so helpful! I washed my quinoa and then dry toasted it in a pan to remove the dampness. It took about 15 minutes. I thought this was enough to remove the bitterness. Well I ground it up in a coffee grinder and made tortillas. Yuck! I know this is a commmon story but it is so cathartic to both talk about it and know there is a solution. Luckily I only experimented with some of the flour. I am going to roast the rest of it tomorrow! I am making the tortillas to go with a soup my friend is making. So glad I tried first and mostly glad I found your site! I am going to write a blog post about making quinoa flour...the trials and tribulations and how some can be avoided by your helpful post! I am going to provide a link of this post. Thanks again and Yay!

My daughter is just understanding the importance of how her allergies affect her causing migraines.

I wanted to experiment with different flours, so I bought a pound of quinoa and made cranberry loaf, but she said it had a heavy quinoa taste. So, I found your site and toasted the remaining flour and made sweet potato latkes and she was so excited because she couldn't taste the quinoa flour at all.

The only difference is that I toasted it on a baking sheet for THREE hours, raking it up and down, then across at the end of each hour to get it all toasted. You could smell it strongly when it first started toasting, but the smell gradually dissipated as it toasted; you could barely smell it when it was finished.

You are fabulous to have discovered this technique. Thank you ever so much.
Carol
San Diego

So it isn't about safety - it is about flavor. You can use any quinoa flour without toasting with absolutely no danger to you. Problem is that it won't taste great. Try a batch of whatever it is you are going to make both with toasted flour and with the sprouted flour untoasted. See what you think.